Arcen Games

Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: TheVampire100 on August 24, 2016, 01:08:15 PM

Title: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on August 24, 2016, 01:08:15 PM

I've talked about this long ago in soem other thread (I don't remember which one) where I said DD2 is a very terrible game and has a very terrible buisness model.Now I've changed my opinion. the buisness model still is crap, you pay horrendous amounts of money for very minor stuff. nad no one can tell me a little costume is worth 20$.The gameplay itself however have been improved.

But let's start from the beginning. For those who don't know th egame, Dungeon defenders 2 is the successor of the well praised game dungeon Defenders and the not so well received Dungeon Defenders Eternia. The game takes several years after the first one but does not follow a true storyline at the momemt. The game is a hybrid of tower defense and rpg, you place towers and barriers in a 3dD environment but you also fight with a created character along your towers. Your character can level up and invest status points in his attributes, you collect also equipment with various traits. Those benefit both you and your towers in different ways, they can increase attack speed, damage, health or give special abilities. The goal is like in any TD game to protect your base from waves of enemies, after each mission you are awarded with loot, xp, gold and medals.Medals are a currency that has been introduced when the first new hero entered the game. Medals are used to buy various stuff but the main reason why tehy have been created was that you buy new heroes with it. The developers ignored the fact that people had already a working currency because they didn't want all people to buy the new hero instantly. Why? Because they wanted to sell him also for real money. You needed 12.000 medals to buy him. The reward for a daily quest (you get one each day and can holp up to three) was around 100 medals. 200 medals was the best you could get. This means you had to grind for 60 days (or more) to get the new hero. The backlash on this was really hard, the developers had to bear a lot of negative criticism but they pretended you could get the new hero in a week or two. At that point I stopped playing the game because I was fed up how they handled the game. If you haven't guessed already, DD2 is a free to play game and is designed as a MMO game. Somethign the first game wasn't. But the first one had also its flaws because the released every tiny update as purchasable dlc instead of adding new features for free. I can understand when you charge for an expansion (which they also did. They made an expansion and divided it into four parts, you had to buy each part for the full expansion) but why do I have to buy the new hero that could have been free? Or why do I have to buy a winter themed costuem that coul also have been free? The dlc system wasn't well liked and because of this they went with the f2p model this time. because when the game is free you have a good excuse for charging extra stuff. Yay!Like I said before, the buisness model is bullshit. They haven't leanred a single thing in the years and I doubt they ever will. But at least they won't charge for extra maps this time, these are for free (now).

Okay, all this sounds bad, so why do i suggest the game? Because they imrpoved the worst part of the game, the medal system. When the medal system came out it was the most terrible thing int he game. You could buy only one thing int he game and this was an overprized mess ant took you forever to get it. They chnaged this entirely. First they have improved the daily rewards, from 200 medals max to 450. They also decreased the cost of new heroes. Heroes still cost 12.000 medals but two weeks after release the prize will drop permanently to 10.000 medals. Additionally they also removed the monthly quests which were too hard and grindy to fulfill and added weekly quests that are easy to achieve. Weekly quests give you 600 medals each. Additionally each weekend is 3x medals weekend that increases the medal drop on maps you beat (does not increasee the amount from quests). With this imrpovements you can get a new hero in less than a month. This is still a lot of time but it's fair. Medals got also multiple new uses, you can use them as alternate currency to gold in every shop, you can also buy soem special ability spheres (give your characters new abilities) that are unobtainable with gold. the best thing is however, you can use them to by more slots for heroes. Each player has alimit of four characters that you can increase if you unlock a new hero or buy a new slot directly with medals. Before it changed to medals it was only obtainable with real money.

They also have drastically buffed all the older heroes that were too weak compared to the new hero and enemy statistics.

The reason I got back to DD2 was basically because of the release of a new hero, the Lavamancer. That hero looked so badass, I wanted to try him out. I'm glad I gave DD2 another chance, it's a better experience than before and I don't have to work my ass off for tiny rewards. The game still needs big improvements but it's now playable for people that don't want to spend a single dime.

These are currently the heroes tha are in the game:

The four base heroes (free from the start) are the Squire, Apprentice, Huntress and Monk. These were also the four basic characters from the first game.

The Squire is a tanking hero, he has a lot of health and can build barriers with a lot of health. These barricades block enemis in the way and attract their attacks, protecting your other towers and of course your base. He also has some attack towers to assist his barricades.

The Apprentice is a jack of all trades, he can cast powerful abilities, has his own barrier, has strong attack towers and a good support tower that slows down enemies.He can be built in any direction and is good for newcomers.

The Huntress builds traps instead of towers. Traps will never be ignored by enemies and amage them if they walk over them. A triggered trap looses a charge and will eventually disappear once out of charges unless you refill them. She also has a poison tower that deals damage over time and is her only true tower.

The Monk is a supporting character, he has no great offensive qualities but he has auras that affect enemies and towers in range. He can place a damaging aura, a healing aura for allies and a protection and damage boost aura for towers, he also has an anti air tower that targets only airborne enemies.

Since then the developers have added 4 new heroes.

The Abyss Lord was the first new character. Instead of towers he summons udnead creatures to the field that follow the basic tower rules. However each creature has its own ability that the Abyss Lord can trigger at wish. he also ahas a movable ultimate defense, the colossus. he can have only one but he can move him wherever he wants.

EV2 is the remade version of EV from DD1. She is asupport character that builds small laser stations that link to other stations and build a laser grid. The built grid can either reflect incoming shots, slow down enemies or heal and boos other towers. She can also build a weapon manufacturer that gains charges with defeated enemies and builds a super weapon for a one-time use.

The Gun witch is the first combat only character. She cannot build a single defense but instead has twice the amount of abilities that regular heroes have. She can also fly in air and snipe enemies from there without having to fear getting hit.

The Lavamancer is the newest character in line. He is mostly a support character but has also a very strong attack tower that is however very costly. For his abilities he uses lava mana instead of regular mana, he has to collect lava mana from chasms that he can build for free on the map (two per map). He can build oil geysirs that slow down enemies and also a barricade that petrifies enemies and makes them taunting targets for nearby enemies. He can burrow underground and travel very fast while healing himself. His ultimate defense is a large and expensive volcano that can hit the entire map (except soem very large ones) and attacks very fast but the attacks are random and unpredictable. He can have only one volcano and move him around if he needs to (for some of the bigger maps). Additionally the Lavamancer can "errupt" which boosts all defenses in range with more attack damage, attack speed and special abilities. Thsi erruption costs a lot of his lava mana but is useful to boos defense points where a strong attack is happening.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Mánagarmr on August 24, 2016, 01:54:28 PM

I tried DD1 way back and remember reading about DD2 coming out and just yawning. There was something that just put me off to the sequel, but I can't remember what. It could just have been me being utterly bored with the first one.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on August 24, 2016, 02:08:19 PM

There were about two to two and a half years of bad decision making. The game is slowly recovering.

Campaign Revamp is progressing (also slowly). I can't say anything about it, both because NDA and because I haven't seen (https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,18928.0.html) the latest changes. I will admit that I haven't played Live since...er...last November and that I do get a bunch of stuff for free.

Personally I think the lavamancer's towers are too big, but generally speaking I like their mechanics (the 6 which does the petrification is just awesome).

Overall I still don't think the game is quite there yet. Definitely still needs a lot of work and there are things I definitely don't like, but it's better than it was nine months ago.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on August 24, 2016, 03:48:50 PM

I haven't thought about this but yes, the defenses of the Lavamancer take up a lot of space. I'm pretty sure he will get anerf sooner or later because at the moment his defenses are a little too strong. Especially the petrification barrier. Not only do they count as beefy barrier with lots of hp (but lower than other barriers), they also have a good supporting quality that completly disables an enmy and makes him a favourite target of other enemies. On normal enemies this is not a big deal, it is however for the mini bosses on each map. They can be petrified like any other enemy and you can basically stun lock them forever. Ogres are currently trivial problems.

About maps, I think incursions are currently the most interesting part of the game. They've added some very cool challenges. What started as maps with a specfic enemy theme (wyverns, goblins, skeletons) turned into several cool mini games/boss fights. Power Surge allows to instantly build and upgrade defenses during combat but all your defenses are defenses are destroyed after a short time, making it a mainly combat oriented map. The bling King pressures you to collect gold crystals in time or he will unleash a big tnt bomb. Demons Lair matches you against a giant demon lord that can only be attacked if ou knock him out with a catapult first. And the Spectral Knight Incursion summons incorporal knights that cannot be harmed by normal means, you have to match the colors of the cleansing torches to the colors of the spectral knights and only then you can defeat them.The ideas for incursions are well made and give good challenges and varity for players while also prividing interesting items on each incursion fitting its theme. The bling king for example gives out a bow that can turn enemies into gold statues.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on August 24, 2016, 04:09:13 PM

Bling King is actually one of my least favorite of the new incursions for reasons I can't talk about.

The one where defenses only last for 30 seconds is my absolute least favorite. There was nothing that would make that mode fun, it's really just ugh.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on November 16, 2016, 06:52:14 PM

Dungeon Defenders released a Terraria Crossover Update. The game features stuff from Terraria in the game, there are two maps (it's actually the same map but one is a Blood Moon variation of it) that are designed after Terraria. It even has crafting stations where you can "craft" stuff for various buffs. In truth it simply is "collect this, use it there, get this buff".

They added several weapons from terraria to the game but these weapons can only obtained with a new exclusive resource that you get from finishing the new map.And the final bit, they added a new heroine, the Dryad from Terraria. The Dryad summons defenses that summon monsters from terraria to fight for her. there are bees, slimes, hapries and the angy nimbus. She also can summon stars that fall on enemies or throw purification powder that creates mushrooms to heal her.A twist to her is, that she got corrupted after she entered the world of Dungeon Defenders. Because of this she can now switch at any tiem to a corrupted form that enhances her abilities and defenses but deplets all her mana over time.The new incursion is the Blood Moon event of Terraria. You are spammed with legions of udnead creatures and floating eyes and have to give your best to defend three crystals at once (it's very hard). In the last wave the Eye of Cthulu spawns with the same attack pattern it already had in its own game. It looks really cool in 3D, I have to admit it. But it's also a really easy boss to defeat since it does only minor damage and ignores defenses all together.

For Terraria players is also new content. In Terraria you can now find a new NPC, the Tavern Keeper. He sells the well known Etheria crystals that, when placed, start an invasion event. He also sells towers that you can use to defend against the new enemies that come from Dungeon Defenders. Defeated enemies drop a new currency (Defnder Medals) that you can use to purchase new cosmetics and weapons at the Tavern Keeper.The stuff from DD looks really cool in pixel style.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on November 16, 2016, 07:28:05 PM

There should be an AI War crossover.(http://www.sherv.net/cm/page/hidden/skype/bandit.gif)

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on November 29, 2016, 04:38:10 PM

Thenew boss seems bugged. Happens more often in the highest difficulty. He simply floats into one direction and never stops. Since he has 50 Million Hp it is impossible to take him down before.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on November 29, 2016, 08:20:28 PM

Thenew boss seems bugged. Happens more often in the highest difficulty. He simply floats into one direction and never stops. Since he has 50 Million Hp it is impossible to take him down before.

Details, please.What hero were you on, what did you do just before it happened, were you solo?

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on November 29, 2016, 08:38:41 PM

It happened many times so I cannot say much about it but I always was with a team and most of the time I used Apprentice. I canno remember what other players used and it hapened only in the NM4 difficulty for me so far. I heard from others however it can happen in lower dfficulties as well but NM4 seems to be th eone were it happens the most often.It seems to happen when the find takes too long I think.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on November 29, 2016, 08:42:00 PM

Looks like its known about, but hard to reproduce.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on November 30, 2016, 11:13:09 AM

Yep, I saw the bug report. I think it might have something to do with status effects. Since the eye is a boss and a flying enemy it might be that the game does not fully recognize specific status effects on it or cannot handle it well. For example knock-up shouldn't work for obvious reasons on it. But it could be that it is still affected to some point and because of this flies endlessy to the sky. That's just a theory though.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on November 30, 2016, 12:49:52 PM

I know someone managed something similar with the assassins on Alter of the Athane incursion. But I think the cause there was different.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on December 01, 2016, 11:30:30 PM

Bought the Dryad now. I don't know if you have her already but you can try her out anyway on the town for free.

The funny thing about the Dryad is, she feels more like a Summoner as the Summoner replacement in DD2 (Abyss Lord). She places "nests" on the map and the nests spawn in regular intervalls Terraria monsters. She has one fpr slimes, one for hornets, one for harpies and one for the angry nimbus. There is however a max cap for monsters per nest.The annoying part for her is that she has to place first the world tree and then she can place her defenses around it. I don't know why but that's what she does. The defenses ont he other hand cannot get attacked, at least taht's what it looks like. They work similiar like auras and traps that they degrade when they are used. In this case whenever a new monster pops up.The world tree acts as barrier, as anchor for the Dryad defenses and it also places some nice buffs on heroes that fight in its range. I don't rmember the exact stats but it heals 5%max HP and increases damage if I remmeber correctly. with spheres you can give it some new buffs, making it a big tanky support tower. Funny thing is, it improves other barriers while being one itself. I don't think this was well thought from them but whatever.

Except that I still have to get around with the switching between Corrupt and Normal mode. The corrupt mode drains the mana really fast.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on December 02, 2016, 01:08:26 AM

The annoying part for her is that she has to place first the world tree and then she can place her defenses around it. I don't know why but that's what she does.

It's a mechanic that I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I am interested in seeing how players handle it. That is: I'm sure it'll have some kind of metagame differentiation involved, but I cannot predict if it will be positive or negative. In the meantime it's interesting and different.

The defenses ont he other hand cannot get attacked, at least taht's what it looks like. They work similiar like auras and traps that they degrade when they are used. In this case whenever a new monster pops up.

The harpy's nest is directly attack-able. Angry Nimbus might be, I haven't checked in a while, might've been a bug. Slimes are definitely a "trap" type defense, using up a charge to spawn a slime.

I don't rmember the exact stats but it heals 5%max HP and increases damage if I remmeber correctly. with spheres you can give it some new buffs, making it a big tanky support tower. Funny thing is, it improves other barriers while being one itself. I don't think this was well thought from them but whatever.

I think it heals 2%, actually. Or I might be remembering one of her skill spheres (there's one that is literally "gain X% to every stat": +15% damage, +15% damage reduction +2% healing per second....)

Except that I still have to get around with the switching between Corrupt and Normal mode. The corrupt mode drains the mana really fast.

Yeah, it's super super fast. There's a skill sphere that lowers it from 6 to 4, and she does regain some when she kills an enemy, but it's still like "be different for 45 seconds." All her abilities change, too (her 1/2/3) and there's a few skill spheres that trigger off it (one gives your defenses more damage when you're not angry, the others give some kind bonus when you are).

TL;DR, if you don't own any additional heroes yet, the dryad is a solid choice. The only "con" is that her mana is 100% generated by casting her 3 (single target high damage skill) while not angry. It drops a star on something's head and you can pick the star up for 30 mana. You're limited in how many you have available, and it recharges one use per....5 kills? Something along those lines. Same charges are used when angry, too (that #3 being an AOE dot, similar to Broomnado or the Abyss Stone).

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on December 02, 2016, 01:31:09 AM

Getting mana not from enemies or by regeneraion seems to be the new standard in Dungeon Defenders 2 I have the feeling. The Lavamancer did the same with his fissures and the Abyss Lord has to suck it from enemies directly 8he still can collect the blue crystals though).

I don't have the Gun Witch, EV2 or the Mystic but I think the Gun witch has also another mana mechanic? She has anyway only magic abilities so it would make sense if she would have an alternate source for mana.I don't know anything about the mystic, haven't seen any videos about her, I don't even know what her defenses do.EV2 uses normal mana I think but I could be wrong on that.

Which hero should I get next? What heroes do you have at the moment?

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on December 02, 2016, 11:43:17 AM

Gunwitch just generates mana like crazy. One of her abilities actually takes so long to finish executing it's high mana cost is irrelevant. It's actually hard to run out of mana with her, and even then it's like "oh no, let me just--" *ability*

EV2 uses "heat." As she uses abilities, it goes up, firing her gun and it goes down. Her right-click attack makes it go up, though, which I think is dumb.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on March 07, 2017, 08:10:03 PM

Okay, this is a big one. So essetnially Trendy remade DD2 entirely. I may sound exaggerating but they really have reshaped the game.So first let me post the big patch page: http://trials.dungeondefenders2.com/

The new update is called "Trials" but I often call it Ascencion update.

Of you have played DD2 before, you can bet one thing: All your progress, all your effort, all the time you spent has been taken away fgrom you. You get basically nothing.Just to make it clear before my rant starts, I like the new approach of the update and the system itself. it gives players more flexibility on their chars and allows them to shape them better to their liking. I'm simply not happy that they made such a big step suddenly. They coudl have broken the entire thing down in smaller steps, that people can better prepare. The update also needs a lot of balancing.

Okay, finally let's come to the changes. Are you one of the people, that had the rare weapons with cool passive effects? Had a Toxic Shock bow? Bling-o Midas? Harbinger Sword? You still have those items and they still look cool on your chars. But they have ripped off the passives of every single item. Items have no passives anymore, that means those special weapons don't have them either. Which... does not make them special anymore, I guess. Euipment does not come anymore with Defense stats (stats for your towers), instead they come with battle stats like bonus health, more damage, armor etc. Relics drop only with defense stats, stuff that increased the hp and damage of your towers. Even stuff like attack speed (which wasn't there before). Relics can now be assigned to towers individually, so you can gve a hp boost to barriers and an attack boost to dps towers. This allows you to fit your towers with what they need instead of making a compromise and fitting only hp boots ont he squire because you want only to use the barriers. This is probably the best idea in this update, it allows you to make the best use of every single hero you have instead of arranging them to fill into a certain role. The sad part is of course, your items are (at the start) garbage because they don't fit intot he new system at all. Since stats have been redesigned, you might end up with stats that aren't good. You also have of course nto enough relics for every single hero, you prpibably have only one relic per hero, but now you need four times the amount. Without relics, every single tower is now shit.Why? Because passive stats (from leveling up) that you could invest into certain points like more damage or defense health, are gone. leveling up has only the purpose to equip stronger items, that's all. That means you need relics to give your towers any stats at all, otherwise you cannot use them (except in easy mode).

Skill spheres, which also gave passive effects to your heroes, are gone too. Both Skill Spheres and item passives are now unified into a new system, called Shards. Every player that completed the campaign before the update got a collection of "good will" shards. pretty much you get a collection of the most basic and terrible stuff that you could get from easy missions. These give some basic passive effects, like boosting the stats of your towers by a certain percentage or giving your char more movement speed. Shards can be fit into equipment, equipment now has slots, the rarer the item, the more slots it has. Shards help you to shape out your characters better and to give them the much needed boost. They also give the special abilites that were on your items befroe. But don't think you get the same shard that your Toxic Shock bow had before just because you have that bow. Thats why older players are literally screwed now, because they lost everythign that they made strong and got only the most basic stuff in return that does not help them. new players will of course adapt to the new system because... well, they are new, they don't know it any other way. Also during their progress during the camapign they get all the items and shards they need while older players get nothing useful anymore.Generally however, shards are the way to go. They give your heroes the much needed flexibility. I really hate it that you got sometimes items with better stats, that were useless to you because they didn't had the passive effect you needed. The new system allows you to switch out your items easily when you got something with better stats while still keeping your passives. An amazing approach despite the horrible execution during launch.

Nightmare difficulty is gone, it was replaced by the even harder Chaos mode. Chaos is the new "hard mode" and the new way to play the endgame. Chaos introduces 5 new enemies on each of its difficulty levels, the first one is the Goblin Shield Bearer that blocks all incoming damage from the front. I haven't seen the others so far, because I cannot beat even Chaos 1. Chaos is really a lot harder then before, especially because enemies now scale with your stats and the number of players. i don't know how much they scale but a lot of player they, that this needs to be balanced right now because it's over the top. The gap between campaign and Chaos is huge, Campaign is a piece of cake while Chaos is... well, chaos. It's even harder because all your tactics, that relied on your passives, are not possible anymore. I heard that the Angry Nimbus from the Drayd is the new meta. Probably because its damage scales so well with defense power and it does not rely on passives so much.As I'm still strugglign to adapt, I cannot talk much in detail about the entire changes of the difficulty or the enemies.

Ascension is another endgame conetn newly introduced. when your characters reach level 50, they accumulate ascension xp. The ascension xp are gained for their class (mutliple heroes of the same class do not produce more xp) and once you reach a new level, you can invest the xp into ascension points. these are small passive effects that work for every hero of the same class. For example you can increase stun durations of skills or increase the range of towers. Ascension allows you to progress your hero even further when you reached the limit through items and shards. The upper limit of ascension levels is really high and I think it will a very long time for the first one to reach the end. I mean, some of the upgrades have 999 levels. Thats insanely high, lol. Acension replace the old stat system you had before.

Items and shards can be now easier be upgraded. Before the update you had to sacrifice tons of other items among a good amount of gold. Now you need only gold and you can do this quickly from your backpack, even if you are on a map at the moment. You don't have to talk to a specific NPC anymore, this saves time and nerves.

Trials are a new way to play the game. They are tied with the new Chaos difficulty and you are assigned to play certain maps, if you complete them, you get the rarer shards and items you need for your character.

Additionally to all of the above, they balanced everything again, heroes, enemies, towers. A lot of heroes have their towers or abilites changed in one way or another. Every tower draws less aggro from enemies, so you are guarented that they rather attack your barriers.Some towers have been exchanged with their skill sphere counterpart, for example the flameburst tower of the Apprentice is now the flamethrower tower.

Players have now bigger bags to carry more loot. whcih is funny since you need less space because passives on items are gone. But I think you eed the extra space for your shards, so you can collect, sort and exchange them as you need. Honestly, since I'm still in the early phase and get only trash shards, I don't see how much space I currently need.

Anyway, I think oerall the update is a great idea with a bad execution. Old players raged a little when it came out (honestly, this is justified) but people are already making new strategy guides and lay out new tactis for the game. It's great how the meta has changed. I also hope it's now more flexible instead of seeing the same tower build execution on every single map. I'm tired of PDT explosions.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on March 08, 2017, 11:56:18 AM

Okay, finally let's come to the changes. Are you one of the people, that had the rare weapons with cool passive effects? Had a Toxic Shock bow? Bling-o Midas? Harbinger Sword? You still have those items and they still look cool on your chars. But they have ripped off the passives of every single item.

Many of those passives were actually multiple passives (Bling-o-Midas was two) and didn't quite "fit" in the new system easily, so they were basically just disabled for now. They'll make a return. Unique weapons and their passives will be just like any other passive: a shard, except that it won't be removable. It's permanently attached to the item.

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The gap between campaign and Chaos is huge, Campaign is a piece of cake while Chaos is... well, chaos. It's even harder because all your tactics, that relied on your passives, are not possible anymore. I heard that the Angry Nimbus from the Drayd is the new meta. Probably because its damage scales so well with defense power and it does not rely on passives so much.As I'm still strugglign to adapt, I cannot talk much in detail about the entire changes of the difficulty or the enemies.

I don't know about the meta, but yes, Campaign -> C1 is a wall. So is C3 -> C4 I hear.But I don't know about it first-hand because I haven't been able to play without cheats for a year (I'm on RQA: my testing account has cheat access).

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Trials are a new way to play the game. They are tied with the new Chaos difficulty and you are assigned to play certain maps, if you complete them, you get the rarer shards and items you need for your character.

Just so this is out there:Trials is Chaos and forces you to play on a random map from a list of 5. Playing a specific map is called "practice mode" by Trendy and offers 10% of the exp, gold, and defender medals and garbage loot (the ipwr is fixed at 255, although ipwr is no longer "a thing").

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Anyway, I think oerall the update is a great idea with a bad execution. Old players raged a little when it came out (honestly, this is justified) but people are already making new strategy guides and lay out new tactis for the game. It's great how the meta has changed. I also hope it's now more flexible instead of seeing the same tower build execution on every single map. I'm tired of PDT explosions.

There's definitely things I like about the update, there's also things I don't like.The new enemies just completely wreck a whole swath of towers and heroes with no regards to making strategy interesting.

"Shield goblins can't be hit by projectiles from in front? Well hug you piercing, even if you hit from behind the shield intercepts the shot." I bug reported this and was told "it's not getting fixed because THAT'S HARD also totally unrealistic: if the shield can intercept from the front then it should also intercept from behind." AKA: hug you gameplay. The shield also intercepts shots when the goblin is knocked into the air or turned into a lovably book*.*Book Drop + Shield is getting fixed in the next hotfix, I believe.

The shield bubble enemies (I have no idea what their official name is) can get turned to stone by Maw of the Earth Drake, buuuut their shield doesn't go down when they are frozen, despite the "weakness to stun." Also note that there's all of two ways to deal stun that don't involve projectiles. Neither of which would be overly bothered by the shield anyway (melee attacks with a stun shard or seismic slam).

EMP orc's emp blast is huge and lasts forever. It's getting an overhaul to be more of a linear projectile thing (think collosus direct command thing, and the duration will be reduced). Which the reflect wall can reflect. And when it does so, the projectile still disables traps as if its team was still an "enemy" shot. Unlike every other reflected projectile.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on March 08, 2017, 02:55:52 PM

They just released another "Balance" patch, but the entire thing is a joke. All they did was nerf towers left and right. People are completely mad about this right now.Patch notes: http://steamcommunity.com/app/236110/discussions/0/135511027316084841/

As you can see, they nerfed most towers that were currently considered "strong" but they didn't do anythign to fix the appearent problems witht he enemies. on the question, why they left them as they are, the answer was "Wer will be doing this in a few weeks". I cannot say how bad this decision actually is. You cannot balance one thing but leave another aspect completely out just because you don't know at the moment how to do it. Practically they left the towers now in a terrible state and you still have to deal with the overpowered enemies. It's pretty much a hopeless fight. I think I will skip this game until they balance this out. I was happy when I saw there was an update today, because I thozght they would balance the enemies, niope, they thought nerfing towers was more important. while I can see that some nerfs were needed, they HAVE to balance the enemies. Are they blind or dumb or what? It's fricking hard to do anything right now and now it got even harder. How are people supposed to get any progress? At this point people believe Trendy made this, so people have to put insane amounts of times into the game until they get something decent. This might be actually very true. Trendy made some comments that Chaos 5 should only be for the most elite players in the game and that you need a lot of time to prepare for that. Problem is, that this does not apply to Chaos 5 only. It applies to the Trials in general.

Also, Draco, on regard of the Cybork, they "fixed" that the EMP lasts forever. Actually they made it worse. They halved the duration but now he activates the EMP blast on every attack, so this doesn't actually matter. it could be 5 seconds and he still would spam this forever. Unless you stunlock Cyborks, there is no way to interrupt them long enough. Maybe this will be the enw Meta.

Also, I agree, knocked up or stunend enemies SHOULD be subject to all damage instances like normal, after all they are disabled, why should they be able to use their special abilities, even if they work passively?

About item passives: Even if they return in some way, what I actually meant was, that you NOW don't have them anymore. And you still can get them as shard (I thought I said this, maybe I forgot that) but the problem is, you don't have them at this point. They took them from you and you have to grind them again. Problem is, this is too hard, because most people relied on those passives for their strategy and cannot adapt to anything new. After people figuered this finally out, the new "proper" way of playing gets nerfed again. At this point Trendy tries everything to fight any useful strategy to make the game easier. They should stop turning this more and more into a hardcore game. As a f2p title this does not help with receptions at all.

Anyway, I'm a bit salty now. The update before was simply "okay, it's new, okay I lost everything, game was in Early Access anyway, time to grind again". After this one I'm pretty much done until they finally put their shit together and balance stuff out. This has gotten ridiculous and I don't want to play an elitist game,w here only the hardcore players can do anything at all.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on March 08, 2017, 04:02:40 PM

A few things, mostly based on the salt I've already seen - Poison Dart Tower crit rate being reduced. Well, seeing as its crit rate was 30% per dart when literally everything else is at 3% base, that's a bug. It was fixed. - Angry Nimubs: loss of AOE is definitely a nerf, but as I was never told that it was (or was not supposed to have AOE) I can't comment - EMP orcs firing their thing every attack: I'll certainly say something about this next time I can. - World Tree cost change: as the world tree was being used as the most durable barricade in the game this is quite appropriate. - Arcane barrier: Not sure why it had a 200 health scaling to start with. RQA had already mentioned that it's health scaling was on-par with barricade, but cost less DU and that got updated (to be identical). - Bookdrop lifespan being reduced: this is new to me and I'm going to mention it. - Radiant Power: I mentioned and reported that shit back when shards first showed up. It was stupidly amazingly overpoweredly broken as hug.

Basically day 1 Dani and I geared ourselves up to see if we could transition from Campaign to Chaos 1. He told me to randomly generate about 24 shards to play with. He then went and dumped every single one in existence into his inventory to play around with. He ended up giving himself a radiant power shard (which the base % was something like 10% and it scaled up to 150%). He was crushing Chaos 1 left and right and I was unable to finish even a single wave. He was so confused so we compared gear: He'd forgotten he had radiant power. When we compared I pointed it out to him and the fact that he was getting 100% of his hero damage as raw defense power. His hero damage (on just his weapon) was 2000ish. His DP from gear was 300. I said "No lovably wonder you were crushing things and I had to generate ipwr 30,000 before I came close."[/quote]

Not sure about anything else.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on March 08, 2017, 04:15:51 PM

Uhm, the wworld tree is by far the worst barricade, not the most durable. that would be the Maw of the Earth Drake and that costs twice the normal Du than any other, so it's justified. The world Tree has the worst stats, a fairly low hitbox which means enemies will more easily walk besides it and doesn't do anything on the offense. You can argue now "but it's abarrier, why shoudl it do any offensive?" but all other barriers DO that kind of thing while the world tree simply acts as anchor for Dryad defenses (which is already a stupid system to begin with) and healing aura (with a terrible tiny range after the recent changes to its behaviour). I agree that the costs should be on par with the rest barriers, but so should be the health. The salt is not because of the costs but because it's in every other way ifnerior to other barriers and the costs were the only reason why you would buy it.What health do you have on it anyway if you say it is the most durable barricade?

I cannot comment on Radiant power but people left and right acknowledged it was broken.

Also I'm not talking about stuff that was broken or needed to be nerfed. but you notivced yoruself, that you cannot beat C1 with the stuff you get fromt he campaign. That#s the problem. People don't use the op stuff because it's op but because it is at this point the only way to even play this game. If they nerf the only towers that CAN beat Chaos/Trials, why not balance the enemies, that are currently broken, at the same patch?

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on March 08, 2017, 04:49:17 PM

Also I'm not talking about stuff that was broken or needed to be nerfed. but you notivced yoruself, that you cannot beat C1 with the stuff you get fromt he campaign.

That was before a significant balance pass. That was before the alteration to stats due to how each tower got its totals. It was using the old numbers (5 pieces of gear -> all towers) but only applying the result from *one* item to each tower.

In any case, I do agree that there's a problem. But I also know that I'm ill-equipped to make judgement calls on balance (I never got into the original nightmare difficulty and even during testing I couldn't beat NM2+ without cheats, even using 750 gear). The problem is, we were never asked to fill out any feedback forms on what our thoughts were. It was all "verify that X happens/doesn't happen."

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on March 08, 2017, 05:06:15 PM

That's a very bad testing process. Not on your end, but on trendys end that they say they don't want to hear feedback. They pretty much NEED that but don't care. But at least that explains why every patch is badly optimized when it comes out first.

Anyway, I may overreact at this point and I'm sure they WILL balance it eventually. They always do. They did it with the heroes, with the defense medals system, wit the Terraria update. They will do it here as well. Problem is, that stuff should be tested before (and as I know now, it is tested before but they don't care for feedback) and should be balanced out at the first day. Instead we have to wait now several weeks until they know how to fix this.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on March 08, 2017, 05:16:40 PM

Update:Book drop duration was a bug.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on March 08, 2017, 10:42:47 PM

Okay, bugs aside, I think the following thing are currently issues that should be solved:-Gold farming. It's terrible at this point and it's now needed much more then before. Before trials, gold was never a problem, you didn't need much and you got more then you get today. 3000 gold per campaign quest, thtats enough to level one shard for one level. And only at the early levels. 80 gold if you sell a legendary equipmenz. Is this some kind of sick joke? I don't even collect equipment anynore because it's a waste of time.

-Difficulty gaps. Difficulty sikes on higher levels are okay, but the gaps here are a different story. The gap between campaign and trials is too big. Basicallly a good design choice would be that you can immediatly jump into Chaos 1 once you finished the campaign. It's currently not possible. The first gap should be between Chaos 1 and 2 because Chaos is the intended Endgame content while campaign is an extended tutorial that levels your characters to level 50 and introduces you to the enemies and mechanics of the game. If players finish the campaign, they want to do immediatly the trials. They can't at this point, hell, I have better stuff than the crap from the campaign an cannot do it.

-Shard system is awefully balanced at this point. Campaign gives only crap, Chaos 1 gives crap, the good stuff starts at Chaos 3+. There are few exceptions, fortification and destruction are good in general. But the drop system is terrible, you get 2 shards per victory, 3 at best and it always seems very random what you get. Leveling your shards is necessary but tied to the gold problem.

-Enemy scaling. All enemies scale too high if playing with others. And you won't get much of a benefit here. I want to compare this to Sanctum 2. Enemies in Sanctum scale with the number of players, two players mean twice the HP of the enemies. Everything else stays the same, the number of monsters, their damage to players etc. However, more players can get twice the resources as well, since resources are given individually. In DD2 they are solit, there is always a fixed amount of green mana and more players mean, that it gets split evenly among them. That you get multiple attackers on the map does not even this out.

-Some ineffective ascension upgrades. Range Gambit is aweful as I've geard. You trade power vs range and everyone considers this a bad trade.

-Super strong new enemy types. They block damage from different sources or disable defenses. Difficult to deal with, especially since they always come in big combinations. Since you cannot specify what your towers should target first, it' hard to deal with them.

These are all however balancing issues and can be easily sorted out. I have to wait at this point for the next patch, otherwise it's impossible for me to beat Chaos 1. The gap is too big.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on March 08, 2017, 11:52:24 PM

I'll take that and do what I can. Which is admittedly "not much" :\

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on March 09, 2017, 06:40:04 PM

Well, you are only a tester, not a developer. You can only try to give feedback to Trendy but if they listen is ultimately their choice. And so far it seems they don't listen much.At this point I'm actually surprised that there are even testing groups. I thought they would just unleash the patches untested because every single time it is bug riddled, old bugs that were long gone, return again, balancing is far off the charts and Trendy receives heavy backlash fromt he community.You would except they learn fromt his but nope, they do it again and again.They will eventually fix the mess, they always do, but they will take their sweet time with that and after the fix it will only last until they ruin it again. It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, I'm just going to farm gold in campaign until it's balanced, there is not much I can do anyway. It's gonna be boring but at least I can level some equipment and shards that way.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on May 07, 2017, 12:26:12 PM

I think it's time for another recap of the things that have changed. More so because the game is reaching it's full release 8no date yet but the devs stated they are close to the release).

Game had another big update called "Springt Forward". They've added two new chaos tiers (difficulty settings) with two new enemy types. The first one is theHexthrower, a buffed version of the Javelin Thrower. Like his normal counterpart his ranged attacks pierce anything in a straight line but additionally he also debuffs now anything he hits.

The other enemy is the Kobolt, a more annoying version fo the flying kobold. Kobolds dive bomb on defenses and do huge damage, Kobolts on the other hand disable them entirely (EMP effect) for a short duration. Anti-air protection is now signicfically more important than before.

The update also added the option to use tower skins (if purchased wih real money), so more cosmetic options. The plague set on the huntress towers looks sick (pun intended).

They've finally added pc controller support, nearly every pc controller works now, something people complained a lot, s I guess they are happy now? I remember how terrible DD1 was to play with a controller, so I don't play DD2 with one, so I cannot tell if this works 100%.

Bags can now be auto-sorted but with no options HOW you want to sort them. Yay! Hopefully they will add this later.

A new shop that can be accessed from your inventory screen has also been added. basically this shop includes items from all the other shops, so you don't have to run to the NPCs anymore. Unless you want to hatch eggs because that's not in there.

They finally removed the victory chest cutscene (basically the game zoomed to your chest while it spawned and then teleported you directly to it), so you can continue collecting the spoils on the map while the chest spawns.

Additionally the usual balancing changes and bug fixes that I don't want to mention here.

One thing to mention hower is the new "streak" system. If you beat mutliple trial maps in a row, you get now an additional shard for your items.They've also changed how shards drop, before higher chaos tiers could drop anything from their tier and below, now they drop only the shard from their tier and one shard from anything below. This is better because it narrows down what you get if you look for something specific. With the two new chaos tiers they've added also some new shards but also reintroduced old shards/abilities that they removed before.

I think the new shard system is curently the best experience you can get, it still has the random factor that gives you the chance to play the game multiple times without having everything at your hand immediatly but also is narrow enough to reduce big frustration moments because you never get what you want.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on May 07, 2017, 01:03:11 PM

Game had another big update called "Springt Forward". They've added two new chaos tiers (difficulty settings) with two new enemy types. The first one is theHexthrower, a buffed version of the Javelin Thrower. Like his normal counterpart his ranged attacks pierce anything in a straight line but additionally he also debuffs now anything he hits.

I'm sure it will shock no one to hear that there are plans for 3 more (nice round number of 10 total).

Quote

The other enemy is the Kobolt, a more annoying version fo the flying kobold. Kobolds dive bomb on defenses and do huge damage, Kobolts on the other hand disable them entirely (EMP effect) for a short duration. Anti-air protection is now signicfically more important than before.

Kobolts used to also deal massive damage. It was very much complained about and I remember one of the patches being "reduced damage: now towers that focus on DH should just barely survive." And I'm like, "What? No, the whole point is to EMP-blast them. They can't be stunned if they're dead."

Quote

The update also added the option to use tower skins (if purchased wih real money), so more cosmetic options. The plague set on the huntress towers looks sick (pun intended).

Long time coming, they went all-out with it. I've got a few favorites (the Amurica skin for the Squire is super flashy and while I'd never use it, it makes a great poster).

Quote

They've finally added pc controller support, nearly every pc controller works now, something people complained a lot, s I guess they are happy now? I remember how terrible DD1 was to play with a controller, so I don't play DD2 with one, so I cannot tell if this works 100%.

Tne thing to mention hower is the new "streak" system. If you beat mutliple trial maps in a row, you get now an additional shard for your items.They've also changed how shards drop, before higher chaos tiers could drop anything from their tier and below, now they drop only the shard from their tier and one shard from anything below. This is better because it narrows down what you get if you look for something specific. With the two new chaos tiers they've added also some new shards but also reintroduced old shards/abilities that they removed before.

I think the new shard system is curently the best experience you can get, it still has the random factor that gives you the chance to play the game multiple times without having everything at your hand immediatly but also is narrow enough to reduce big frustration moments because you never get what you want.

Any form of "not continuing" will break the streak. If you find something else that does it (besides losing) be sure to report it as a bug. Ditto if you pick continue and don't end up continuing.

Anyway, side from "how it works" I've got no experience actually using it. I think it's a decent enough system, I just wish shards were easier to get a hold of outside of Chaos (cough, new player during campaign, cough).

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: TheVampire100 on May 07, 2017, 03:38:55 PM

I'm sure it will shock no one to hear that there are plans for 3 more (nice round number of 10 total).

10 difficulties sound nice and all but the problem is, they need more maps. I like the approach of the current Chaos system that each difficutly introduces a new enemty type and each tier has it's own set of enemies that counter specific tower types so you have to adapt your strategy towards it (instead of the old system were you had one functioning build and could it apply to any map on any difficulty).Problem is, the map varity is crap at the moment, on all tiers you play basically the same maps with little rotation and this becomes stale. it would be cool if each tier has its own maps according to the enemy types that appear. For example the Kobolts would make sense on maps with a lot of flying spawners.

Kobolts used to also deal massive damage. It was very much complained about and I remember one of the patches being "reduced damage: now towers that focus on DH should just barely survive." And I'm like, "What? No, the whole point is to EMP-blast them. They can't be stunned if they're dead."

Didn't know that but I'm still far from C7 anyway. I just read what they do in the patch notes. I agree this is a problem. Normal flying kobolds 8and the walking ones as well) fill already the role of suicide bombing and dealing huge damage in the process. There is no point in having a third unit do this as well. The whole EMP thing is already enough. We have already the Cyborks as ground, walking unit and the Kobolts fit the flying role, just like with Kobolds and flying kobolds. There is no need to deal damage at all if they can disable the defenses.

Long time coming, they went all-out with it. I've got a few favorites (the Amurica skin for the Squire is super flashy and while I'd never use it, it makes a great poster).

People complained a long time ago that they didn't get their skins and when they will happen but this stopped when either the terraria upedate or the shard update hit, one of the both. Probalbly because there was other stuff to do/complain about.I'm not a fan of the USA themed skins but that's probably because I'm not " 'merican" myself, so I don't feel the national pride that someone who would wear this would feel. I'm acutally not a big fan of national flags(designs in video games as cosmetic skins at all, I want stuff that makes my characters or whatever the equivalent in the game is, look cool, flags don't look cool. Just my opinion though.

Title: Re: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game
Post by: Draco18s on May 07, 2017, 08:26:39 PM

Problem is, the map varity is crap at the moment, on all tiers you play basically the same maps with little rotation and this becomes stale. it would be cool if each tier has its own maps according to the enemy types that appear. For example the Kobolts would make sense on maps with a lot of flying spawners.

I can't say much, but maps are being worked on too.

Quote

I'm acutally not a big fan of national flags(designs in video games as cosmetic skins at all, I want stuff that makes my characters or whatever the equivalent in the game is, look cool, flags don't look cool. Just my opinion though.

Oh me either. I just mean that that particular skin looks good on posers/screenshots.